Abstract

This is a study of the concepts and normative implications of forgery and authenticity. ;Chapter one concentrates on conceptual analysis. A definition of forgery is proffered and then clarified, sharpened, and defended. That having been accomplished, a large number of conceptual issues are addressed. They include the conceptual relations between forged artworks and forged artifacts of other sorts, the possibility that all artworks are forgeries, the complex logic of the attributive adjective "forged," the conceptual relations between forgeries and fakes, and the conceptual relations between forgery and piracy and between forgery and plagiarism. ;Chapter two is an intermediary sort of chapter, one concerned both with the conceptual issues directly addressed in chapter one and with the normative issues directly addressed in chapter three. But it is also, and more importantly, an extensive and intensive study of Nelson Goodman's "Art and Authenticity." Goodman's unique and highly original arguments are explored in detail, but all are found to be seriously flawed. ;The focal question of chapter three is, What, if anything, is wrong with a forgery? To clarify this question, three different points of view and two sorts of criteria are distinguished, and the original question thus becomes six different ones. All six questions are then methodically answered, though the bulk of the chapter is devoted to only one of them, What, if anything, is intrinsically wrong with a forgery from the aesthetic point of view? ;Authenticity and the restoration and reproduction of works of art is discussed in chapter four, and here certain extreme positions--notably, that of Mark Sagoff--are exposed and criticized, and the aesthetic value of good reproductions and restorations properly vindicated. Forgery and authenticity are thus seen to be, in sum, interesting concepts but not ones which have, in themselves, any purely aesthetic import